Blood and Ashes
by danse
Summary: Post EW, Vampire!Duo, and unrequited 21. Duo reflects on his life and afterlife, and how Heero's rejection ultimately led to his meeting with Vince, who wasn't entirely what he seemed... ::Long oneshot::


A/N: I should be working on Deadly Beautiful, but this fic was driving me nuts. Don't forget to review.

01/25: I reloaded it with an edit. I found a few parts that needed fixing.

Disclaimer: For Christmas, I asked Santa Claus for a complete set of Gundam pilots, or if that was too much trouble, just Heero and Duo. Santa coughed loudly, muttered something about copyright infringement and unlawful confinement, and gave me a CD instead.

Blood and Ashes

__

By la danse macabre

~*~

I felt in my element as I wandered casually down the dark street. A full moon and yellow street lamps lit my way through the throngs of people. Not that I really needed the light; I can see in the dark like a cat. Certainly well enough to notice the appreciative looks I got from women--and the occasional man--who I passed. My braid waved back and forth across the back of my shirt as I walked. The shirt was dark purple silk, opened teasingly at the collar to display just a little chest, and went with my black leather pants nicely.

I hadn't really been out at night for a month. It was hunger pangs that drove me out of my safe, warm, dark nest. I only really need to eat around the full moon, and I only choose to eat then. Or drink, whichever you prefer. Because my food, my only source of nourishment, is blood.

The gory waltz of battles, blood and death ended in AC 197. As Gundam pilots who no longer had Gundams, a certain five of the warriors had to make some decisions about where their lives were going to go next. I had an idea of where I wanted mine to go, but that was not to be.

I squeezed my eyes shut painfully, both from an old memory and from the horrible, sharp rumble my stomach had just made. _I gave him my heart, and he ignored me. He didn't want me. He abandoned me for Relena. _

To be fair, he tried to keep contact with me. I got a wedding invitation in the mail one day. I burned it. I wanted nothing more to do with him. He lived planetside, and I stayed on L2, and I never spoke to him or heard from him after I didn't come to his wedding. Instead, I contented myself with thinking morosely about all the hundreds of happy children the two of them must have had at their happy little house on Earth.

That wasn't all I did, though. I had other lovers. They were all female. I was refused the man I wanted, so I didn't want any other men after that. Ever. But I never found again what I wanted to have with him, and I never found anyone who I could talk to about the war. I think that was what I needed the most. Eventually, I got depressed, and I started drinking around the age of twenty-seven. I became an alcoholic wreck, stumbling from one bar to the next until I ran out of bars that would take me.

Most of that period is a blur to me, however, I do quite vividly remember one October night, in AC 207, after a particularly fantastic bout of self-pity left me groaning in an alley in one of the less flowery districts of the colony.

***

__

I lay propped up against a greasy brick wall with my legs splayed out in front of me. My clothes were dirty and torn because I was poor, and nausea and a migraine were fighting for dominance inside me. I was so shitfaced that a garbage can five feet away was blurry and swimming in my vision. 

The people who walked by on the street looked at me with pity or disgust, and a few yelled at me, but no one stopped to help. I kept lying there for an eternity, until my view of the garbage can was suddenly blocked by a pair of black-clad legs. I looked up and tried to focus on the person's face, but I couldn't see anything, and the headache got worse from trying, so I gave up.

"Up you get. This is no place to sleep." The voice sounded deep and masculine, and my head felt a little better when I heard it. The words didn't really register at the time, so I was surprised when I was hauled to my feet. If he hadn't supported me, I would have gone straight back down. He looked at me and sighed, and then I think I blacked out.

*

I woke up with Thor's hammer smashing into my eye sockets over and over, and nearly screamed out loud from the pain. I had to shut my eyes and cover them with the blankets to get the pounding to subside. Eventually, I fell asleep again.

*

The next time I woke was a far more pleasant experience. The migraine was gone, and I didn't feel sick to my stomach. I had no idea what time it was, because the place where I was sleeping had no clocks or windows. It was simply a small, white room, with an overhead light, a table, and a bed. I got up and left the room, still dressed, and followed a dark hallway lit by a nightlight until I found the kitchen. 

The fridge contained an unopened carton of milk and some fresh vegetables, and nothing else. I searched the cupboards until I found a glass, and filled it with water from the sink. I chugged the glass, and then two more after that. I looked at the fridge again and decided I was hungry, but I didn't want to eat food that wasn't mine. I sat down at the table, not knowing what to do, and noticed a piece of paper sitting on the table. It said, 'Eat.' Nothing else. 

That was all I needed, and I helped myself to carrots and broccoli. I wished there was something else, but I was hungry enough not to be picky, and anyway, it reminded me of the healthier diet I had once been on, back when I was a physically fit soldier.

After eating my fill and drinking some more water to subdue my parched throat, I found the bathroom. Once I was comfortable again, I started to wonder why I was alone in a stranger's house. Surely the guy who had rescued me was around somewhere. I searched the whole house, and found no one. There was another bedroom that looked lived in, but the occupant was clearly out for the day. Or I thought it was daytime, but then I found a window. It was too small for even my skinny frame to fit through, and boarded up, but I could see through a crack near the bottom, where the boards met the window sill. I saw a dark sky reflected on the colony walls.

Apparently my savior had peculiar sleeping habits.

I was a little confused, but I wasn't tired enough to sleep, and I had found a TV that would entertain me until the owner of the house came home, if that happened tonight. I settled in for a long wait, with late-night programming to keep me company.

*

A clock on the TV told me that it was four AM when I finally met my mystery man. I heard the sound of the back door opening and shutting, and quickly shut off the TV and stood up. I walked softly into the kitchen, where the back door was, and leaned against the wall to watch him in the light from the hallway, while he took off his coat. 

He looked at me and smiled. "I see you're in a lot better shape."

I nodded in response and took in his appearance. His hair was short, spiked, and black, and his eyes were twin pools of darkness, an unknown colour in the shadows. He was dressed all in black. He stopped and stared at me in return, then walked over and circled behind me, staring at my hair in fascination. I whipped around to face him, instinctively not wanting to turn my back on him.

He nodded in appreciation. "That's the longest hair I've ever seen on a man."

I touched the end of my braid with one hand possessively. "So? Do you wanna make something of it?" I retorted defensively.

He chuckled quietly. "No, I don't." Then he gave me a strange look, his eyes twinkling a little, before he shook his head to dismiss it. He held out one hand, tentatively. "My name's Vince. And you are…?"

I took his hand and shook it kind of reluctantly. "Duo."

"I'm pleased to meet you in better circumstances than the first time. Have you been all right while I was out?"

"Fine."

"I'm sorry, I had some business to take care of." He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat, gesturing that I should sit, too.

So I sat. And we talked. I told him rudimentary details about my life: that I'd fought in the Eve Wars (I said nothing about gundams), that I was an orphan. That I'd never cut my hair. He seemed completely taken with my hair. I tried to ask him questions about himself, but he skillfully dodged every one of them, instead turning them around so that I revealed a little more of myself, but never anything too personal. I was smarter than that.

After a while, I wouldn't say any more, and the conversation ground to a halt. Vince yawned and excused himself to bed, and I was left at the kitchen table to think. I thought a little about the past and a little about the future, but mostly I thought about the complete mystery that was now sleeping in the master bedroom. I checked the crack in the window. The sky was getting lighter. I yawned loudly, and with nothing else to do, I went to bed.

***

My life carried on like that for a month. Both of us would sleep all day, and when I got up at night, Vince would already be gone. There was always food in the fridge to eat, and it was always nutritious. Just from eating regularly and staying clean, I had more energy and got healthier. I always wondered what he ate, though. Nothing looked touched from the last time I'd eaten. Once or twice, I even arranged the food in a certain way, so that I'd know for sure if he'd eaten any. It was never disturbed.

Eventually, I felt a bit like a captive pet, and I wanted to leave the house to get some exercise and see the world. The problem was that every time I went near the door, I felt scared, like I didn't want to go out. I didn't know where in the colony I was, and I had nowhere to go in the middle of the night. But Vince did.

I started trying to get up before he did, to catch him before he left so that I could join him. He was always gone when I got up, no matter how early in the night. Next I tried staying up, sitting in the kitchen, until he left, but I invariably fell asleep around twilight (by the window crack's reckoning), and woke up the next afternoon in my bed.

I was so frustrated that one day when I woke up in the late afternoon, after one of those attempts, I went right to his bedroom door and tried to open it. It was locked. I pounded on it until I thought it would splinter. I got no response; he never woke up. Finally, sense struck me, and I found an old lockpick that I always kept in the base of my braid and used it to pick the lock on the door. I barged into the room and yelled, "Vince!"

Complete silence assaulted me. He slept soundly in a large bed with dark blankets. I crept over to him and peeked at him. I swore to God right then, that I thought he was dead. His face was as pale as the moon against his black hair, and felt cold. His eyes were shut and he wasn't breathing. I looked around for a mirror to put against his nose to check, but I couldn't find one anywhere. There wasn't even one in the bathroom, now that I thought about it. I panicked and tried to do CPR, but I couldn't force his mouth open. His body was already rigid. It was too late.

I left the room and sat around nervously in the kitchen for a while. I had no idea what had happened or what to do next. I fell asleep at the kitchen table, somehow, and didn't wake up until I heard the back door opening. I woke up quickly and realized that I was still in the kitchen. Vince was leaving.

"_You!!_" I yelled, and shot up from the table. My chair fell over, unnoticed. Vince flinched and looked about to run, but shut the door and stood in the kitchen instead.

"Yes?" he said innocently.

Seven million questions crowded onto my tongue at once. "Where…how did…you were…I…"

He frowned, muttered something under his breath, and picked up my chair before he sat down at the table. He looked very pale. I flipped on the light that hung over the table and he flinched.

I sat down and glared at him. "I think there are things that you need to explain," I said very, very quietly.

"Like what?" He looked like he was wondering what the hell I was on, and he was fidgeting a little.

"Why do you go out every night, and sleep every day? Why don't you eat? Why am I here? _Why did you look stone dead this afternoon?_"

His eyes got very wide, and if it was possible, he turned whiter. "How do you know that?"

"I broke into your room, because I needed to talk to you. But now's fine, too."

He sighed, rubbed his temples, and stared at me wearily. Suddenly, he looked about a hundred years old, instead of in his late twenties. After a long silence, he spoke. "I don't eat because I don't need to. I go out at night because the sun burns me. You're here because I have a bleeding heart. And I looked dead because technically, _I was_." He hissed the last two words.

I stared. "Huh?" I tried weakly.

He contemplated me for a while. And then he said two words: "Don't run." I watched in horror as he smiled. He bared his teeth, and his canines got longer and longer, until they were nearly an inch long. His forehead wrinkled a bit and his expression became a permanent snarl. I felt like I was staring at the devil. My brain kept screaming at me to run, far away and as fast as possible, but I was frozen to the spot.

Vince stood up slowly and walked around the table towards me. I could suddenly move, and I jumped up to bolt, but he caught my wrist and slammed it against the table. I yanked backwards, but he was unnaturally strong, and I couldn't escape his grip. He brought his other hand up to caress my face, moving it gently back towards my ear and following my hair down my braid, stroking the length of it like a lover.

"_I love your hair, Duo,_" he purred, his deep voice marred by a soft rumble. He picked up my wrist and stared at me as he held it in front of his chest. I met his eyes and couldn't look away. His dark gaze hypnotized me, and he picked up my other wrist, holding it against the other one, in front of me. I felt myself backed up against the wall, and I whimpered a little in fear as he leaned in close to kiss me. He stopped, millimetres from my lips. "_Such beautiful, silky hair…_" he rumbled softly. I felt shivers go up my spine. He was playing with my mind.

Vince kissed my lips, softly, once, and then worked equally light, almost nibbling kisses along my jawline and down the side of my neck. He stopped somewhere below my ear, and I felt a little sting, and then numbness. I heard him growl very quietly as the numbness spread. After a minute, I felt light-headed, and stared at the overhead light fuzzily as I wondered what was going on. I felt weaker and weaker every second. Everything started to swirl and fade, when he suddenly lifted his head and stared at me again. His fangs were stained with red.

He slapped me on the cheek lightly, to get me to stay awake. I blinked a few times and watched as he lifted his own wrist to his mouth and bit it. Blood welled up from twin points in his skin, and he used one fang to tear a line between them. He pressed his now-dripping wrist against my mouth. "_Drink,_" he ordered.

I drank. At first it tasted coppery, but I kept drinking, and soon the warm, sweet liquid was moving through my system. As I drank, my head cleared, and I realized I was ingesting _my own blood_. I stopped and tried to push away Vince's arm, utterly repulsed, but he pushed it back and told me to keep drinking. I sucked on the wound for another minute or so before he finally pushed me away. I collapsed into a heap on the floor and stared at the bright light. It made my eyes hurt.

He shut the light off and left the house. The back door closed with a click, and I fell asleep against the wall with blood drying on my lips.

***

When I woke up, it was barely nighttime, as if time had run in reverse. I felt weak and my stomach hurt. Vince wandered into the kitchen, dressed in a clean black shirt and jeans. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Are you okay?" he said in his normal baritone.

"What the hell do you think?" I snapped. I hauled myself off the floor. "I feel like I got run over by a parade of cement mixers. What the fuck did you do to me?"

He sauntered over and helped me stand up. "I made you stronger," he said matter-of-factly. "I made you better. You'll never be a poor, sorry-ass loser again. You're powerful, now."

I put a hand on my stomach. "I'm hungry, that's what I am." I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth and winced. "And I have pointy fangs. What _are_ you? What am _I_?"

"We are creatures of the night," he said softly.

***

We were vampires.

Vince taught me how to use all of my new skills to get a meal, and to get money. Now I could see in near blackness, hear mice scratching in walls a block away, and smell potential prey in a crowd of hundreds. My cuts and scrapes healed overnight, and I could control people with a thought.

I also would turn to ash if I was staked through the heart, I would sizzle and eventually turn to ash in direct sunlight, and I would outlive all of my mortal counterparts by hundreds of years. Every day when the sun rose, I would fall into a deathlike trance, no matter where I was, and stay that way until the sun set, so I had best be at home, in bed, when it happened. At the full moon, I would be drawn from my lair to drink the blood of living humans before going home to sleep. The rest of the month, I could do whatever I liked at night.

I lived with Vince for a long time, until I couldn't stand his egocentrism and blatant sexual advances anymore. Then I left, and went to live on another colony in the L2 cluster. In AC 264, I read in the paper that Heero Yuy, one of the brave soldiers from the colonies who fought in the Eve Wars, had passed away peacefully in his sleep. He was survived by his loving wife Relena, four grown children, and several grandchildren. He was eighty-four. I still looked twenty-seven. I ripped the paper up and threw it in my fireplace, and sat there watching it being overwhelmed by time and heat while I stayed unchanged, if a little pale.

I think it's now AC 375, but I don't know for sure and couldn't care less, because at this point, every year is the same to me. I have probably outlived Heero's grandchildren. Sometimes, I feel like I've outlived God Himself.

Twenty five years ago, something went wrong with the colony structures, and half of them died and came down. The rest were abandoned and left to disintegrate. Most of the former colonists emigrated to the moon or Mars to participate in the subsidized settlements there. I stowed away on a cargo shuttle to Earth, and made my home in the area of the former France, not far from the old Cinq Kingdom.

***

We have now brought my story back to the beginning, where I was patrolling the streets of the bar district of Paris. I found La Vin d'Amour, one of my preferred haunts, and strolled inside. The interior was smoky, and warmed by the heat of many human bodies. I walked casually through the crowd, discreetly looking for the right person. Women are usually the easiest prey; they tend to trust a pretty face easily and aren't difficult to persuade. Someone alone…someone lonely. She needed to have the smell of insecurity on her. After passing and rejecting at least twenty people, I found her sitting at the bar.

She was sitting all by herself, nursing a glass of white wine. I could practically _see_ the aura of shyness and insecurity she projected. Her frame was tiny but well-rounded, and she had dark brown hair that floated down over the back of her red shirt. She had the kind of fragile beauty that never fails to drive me wild.

Licking my lips in anticipation, I took an empty stool next to her and turned on what I jokingly call 'the ol' Maxwell charm.' It's a vampire ability that lets me soften up my prey so that they'll do my bidding. I ordered red wine and turned towards her. She was already looking at me. Her eyes were the colour of warm molasses.

"Hello," I said with a smile. My voice was sensually warm enough to melt ice. It did a fine job on her.

"H-hi…" she stuttered. She was hopelessly lost in my eyes, which I'm sure looked like deep violet pools to her. Her black skirt ended just above her knees, exposing tanned, bare legs. 

This was going well enough to be hurried along a little. She would be easy to manipulate. "What's your name, beautiful?" I purred.

"Rochelle…" she breathed, rolling the 'r' just a little bit, betraying her French accent in the common language of the Earth Sphere. "What's yours?" she asked with a shy smile.

"I'm Duo." 

"Duo…" She tried it out on her tongue and decided she liked it. My drink came and I gratefully took a sip. It was fruity and full-bodied.

"So…" I said when I put my drink down. "Are you here alone?" I was putting out suggestive vibrations, but I had to make sure not to make them too strong, or I might overwhelm the girl.

She blushed. "Yes." She looked down at her hands in her lap, then let her gaze travel up my body, stopping briefly at my barely exposed chest and lingering on my face. "Are you?" The question hovered in the air. I tasted just the right emotions on it: desire, a little fear, and not enough boldness to worry about.

"I am. But I hope I won't be for long…" I knew there weren't too many ways to misunderstand that statement, especially when I complemented it by tracing a finger lightly down her arm. She shivered deliciously at the touch and I smirked inwardly. I loved this, it was almost too easy. My hunger was developing a definite edge, and I pushed a little more, moving my hand back up her arm and stroking her soft, dark hair down from her shoulder. "I love your hair…" I was reminded of Vince as I said it, but damn it, I was hungry. I turned on the charm a little more, so that I wouldn't make her nervous with my forwardness. 

A few minutes later, I had my hand resting comfortably on her leg, just above her knee, while we talked. Ten minutes after that, I was leading her out the door into the street. The air was warm and sweet; it tasted like summer. We walked hand in hand down the boulevard towards the nearby hotel district, but I suddenly veered off the street into an alley I knew well. It was very long and had a dead end, with a secure little hiding space obscured by a garbage dumpster. She looked confused and a little nervous; I whirled around to face her and took both of her hands in my own.

"Duo, where--" I silenced her with a finger against her lips and smiled languidly. Quickly, I pushed her up against the wall, with her wrists pinned at her sides by my hands, and kissed her on the lips. My tongue worked its way into her mouth and she relaxed almost immediately. My hands went from her wrists to her head, and I cradled it as she wrapped her arms around me, deepening the kiss a little more.

Finally, I broke away and left her pressed against the wall, gasping for breath, her eyes half-lidded. She looked divine. Unable to resist, I leaned in and kissed her again. She reacted eagerly. With a little snarl, I bit her lip and tasted blood. She squeaked and pulled away with a hand to her mouth. I licked my lips; it was sweet and quite tasty. The blood awakened my baser instincts and I felt my fangs grow suddenly. The time for fun and games was over.

The girl saw the change and tried to scream, but I covered her mouth with a hand. She wrenched away from my grasp and backed up against the dumpster, pulling a small gold cross on a chain from under the neckline of her shirt, and holding it up like a shield in front of her.

I laughed cruelly and reached inside my own shirt. I pulled out a silver chain, revealing a burnished silver cross of my own attached to it. It was a remnant of my childhood years as a church orphan, and I had first kept it, while alive, as proof of my faith in God, and then because it felt strange to part with it. Now I held it out in front of me, mocking my victim's pathetic attempt at self-defense. Vampires only fear the cross if they fear God's wrath, which means they have to believe in God, first. As a former Bible-thumper myself, I eventually decided God had abandoned me and that He didn't care what evil deeds I committed to survive in my unnatural form.

When the girl saw that her tactic had failed, and saw her faith parodied by a soulless creature in God's shadow, she gave up and started to cry in fear. I snarled a grin and advanced on her. Grabbing her head, I exposed her perfect neck and sank my teeth into it greedily. She yelped and then said nothing more, hanging there helplessly while I drained the blood from her body. I held her in a tight embrace and lifted her a little off of the ground while I drained the last of it out of her, then dropped the corpse on the ground next to the dumpster.

"Call me sometime, baby," I muttered as I wiped my mouth, straightened my clothes, and left the alley. I felt full and satisfied enough to sleep for a week, but underneath that, I felt a little sick.

***

It's Christmas Eve. The night before the birth of Christ, and the anniversary of the end of the Eve Wars. Since the colonies, the reason the war was fought, came down, nobody really seems to notice, much less care about, the second event, but I remember.

The moon is full and hanging like a swollen pearl in the black velvet sky. I can't feel the cold, so I stand here in a black silk shirt and black slacks, my silver cross exposed on my chest for the world to see. The graveyard expands, silent and lonely, before me as I follow a familiar path. Finally, I stop in front of a large tombstone, carved to suggest the outlines of an angel. It's over one hundred years old, and time and weather have made the engraved letters hard to read. The tombstone right beside it is just a little younger, but a bit of an overhang at the top has preserved the words 'Relena Yuy' for future generations to read. 

I'm far more interested in the angel one, though. I don't need to try to make out the writing, because I've been visiting this grave every night for the past month. I haven't eaten yet, and my stomach grumbles insistently as I kneel on the ground in front of the tombstone. It can be ignored, because it's not important. All that matters right now is the chunk of granite in front of me.

"_Heero…_" I whisper at the moon. Every year, at about this time, I think of him. For the last hundred-and-seventy-five years, I've thought of him, on this night, and I've wished that I was with him. I should be buried under a stone as worn as the one in front of me, but instead I live a half-life, dead during the day, and killing others to exist whenever the moon compels me. I feel impure. I could never be an angel, like the one carved in front of me. But I would still prefer to be completely dead.

I sit and stare at the stone angel for hours, until the moon sets and the sky lightens a little. My stomach is starting to hurt, and my joints are stiffening. There might be half an hour left before the sun rises. Slowly, I get up, and undo the chain of my necklace with clumsy fingers. The angel has a definite head, separate from its body. I put the long chain around where its neck should be and fasten it again, so that it hangs down the front of the tombstone like an offering.

My most important possession taken care of, I lay down on the ground in front of Heero's tombstone, right over where his body was buried long ago, and cross my arms over my chest. It's getting very hard to move. When I'm lying comfortably on my back on his grave, I watch as the sky turns pink and orange. This is my first sunrise since I became a vampire, so long ago, and it will be my last, if there is any mercy for me. _Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…_

I can feel my body going as rigid as death, and the last thing I can see is the rainbow-coloured sky above me, as the sun slides above the horizon. Heero…

A/N: This was supposed to be a one-shot. Well, it still is, but it's about twice as long as it was supposed to be. That's what happens when you make most of it up as you go along. The tone sort of fades from dark to light at the end. I have a vampire fetish, and this needed to be done. Review and tell me what you think. Flames may be added to your own funeral pyre.


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